Victor Hugo - Les Misérables (1862)

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It seems as though, at the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of heaven infills those who are leaving the light of earth.

Victor Hugo
A man trying to escape never thinks himself sufficiently concealed.

Victor Hugo
When we are at the end of life, to die means to go away; when we are at the beginning, to go away means to die.

Victor Hugo
She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the fact that her little bed was very white.

Victor Hugo
Indigestion was sent into the world to read a lecture to our stomachs...

Victor Hugo
Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

Victor Hugo
Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.

Victor Hugo
Wide horizons lead the soul to broad ideas; circumscribed horizons engender narrow ideas; this sometimes condemns great hearts to become small minded.Broad ideas hated by narrow ideas,-this is the very struggle of progress.

Victor Hugo
It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblences to merit.

Victor Hugo
Algebra is applied to the clouds, the irradiation of the planet benefits the rose, and no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellation.

Victor Hugo
The sunshine was delightful, the foliage gently astir, more from the activity of birds than from the breeze. One gallant little bird, doubtless lovelorn, was singing his heart out at the top of a tall tree.

Victor Hugo
It is sad to tell, but after having tried society, which had caused his misfortune, he tried Providence which created society, and condemned it also.

Victor Hugo
Man is not a circle with a single centre; he is an ellipse with two foci. Facts are one, ideas are the other.

Victor Hugo
The most ferocious animals are disarmed by caresses to their young.

Victor Hugo
It is the peculiarity of grief to bring out the childish side of man.

Victor Hugo
Love, thine is the future. Death, I use thee, but I hate thee. Citizens, there shall be in the future neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood.

Victor Hugo
The peasants of the Asturias believe that in every litter of wolves there is one pup that is killed by the mother for fear that on growing up it would devour the other little ones.

Victor Hugo
To know how to distinguish the agitation arising from covetousness, from the agitation arising from principles, to fight the one and aid the other, in this lies the genius and the power of great revolutionary leaders.

Victor Hugo
Have but luck, and you will have the rest; be fortunate, and you will be thought great.

Victor Hugo
What is the cat?" he exclaimed. "It is a corrective. God, having made the mouse, said, 'I've made a blunder.' And he made the cat. The cat is the erratum of the mouse. The mouse, plus the cat, Is the revised and corrected proof of creation.

Victor Hugo
No matter who you are, the thought of so much suffering and degradation must cause you to shudder at the sight of a veil or cassock, those two shrouds of human invention.

Victor Hugo
What is called honors and dignities, and even honor and dignity, is generally fool's gold.

Victor Hugo
A doctor's door should never be closed, a priest's door should always be open.

Victor Hugo
He sleeps. Although his fate was very strange, he lived. He died when he had no longer his angel. The thing came to pass simply, of itself, as the night comes when day is gone.

Victor Hugo
I am not in the world to care for my life, but for souls.

Victor Hugo
A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed. Things could not go on in this manner.

Victor Hugo
Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. 'The Spirit is a garden,' said he

Victor Hugo
Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that does not prevent them from being of use.

Victor Hugo
When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.

Victor Hugo
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.

Victor Hugo